Award Data

This project will develop an augmented reality application to generate personalized formative assessment feedback as students interact with physical objects related to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) concepts, such as recognizing the shape of an atom. The prototype will be designed as a multi-sensory tool to support students with visual challenges. At the end of Phase I, in a res ...

In a nuclear battlefield, rapid, reliable, and accurate mapping of the radiation contamination is critical. The radiation mapping is required to perform threat assessment and, during route clearance, to find the safest path that minimizes radiation exposure to the warfighter. Current detection methods using handheld or vehicle-borne detectors are inefficient, labor-intensive, and often limited to ...

The blockchain technology offers a distributed security mechanism which is resilient to denial-of-service attacks. Thus, the blockchain constitutes a favorable solution to be utilized to protect mission-critical data during wartime. However, current blockchain systems are not designed to be resilient against large physical attacks such as nuclear or electromagnetic pulse. Also, current Blockchain ...

Intelligent Automation, Inc. (IAI) proposes the application of a powerful imaging technique, based on the multiphase level set framework, for retrieving shapes, locations and dielectric properties of unknown objects within the building walls. To our knowledge, no other technique can simultaneously retrieves the object shapes, locations and their dielectric properties using measurements collected a ...

Current state-of-the-art object detection algorithms are almost exclusively based on Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DCNN). These algorithms all require a large amount of labeled examples for each of the object categories they can recognize. These algorithms will fail for novel objects that only very few or even no prior examples are available. These algorithms are also far less accurate when c ...

SoarTech proposes DeepCounter: a system that automatically learns UAS and C-UAS behaviors across multiple tasks using DRL within a 3D simulation environment. Our system addresses several gaps in applying state of the art DRL to learn C-UAS and UAS behaviors. First, our existing DRL framework extends the state of the art to work with variable numbers of heterogenous agents. Our work in Phase I will ...

Handheld radioisotope identification instruments (RIIDs) are an important, front-line tool for passively detecting, locating, and characterizing radioactive materials and thereby helping to prevent the spread of illicit nuclear materials. Border patrol, customs, and law enforcement personnel, along with warfighters, demand an enhanced, more sensitive RIID capable of integrated gamma and neutron de ...

Chemical and biological (CB) warfare agents are a serious threat to our soldiers and national security. Different warfare agents and microbes may be delivered using solids (powders, particulates, ice crystals), hydrosols (air borne liquid droplets), or aerosols (air-born particulates). Solids, hydrosols, or aerosols can penetrate, accumulate, and transport through both porous and non-porous surfac ...

An electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack could cause widespread outage of the commercial electric power system that could last for weeks to months. Microgrids for defense critical infrastructure (DCI) should thus be equipped to operate in islanded mode for extended periods of time using only local fuel storage and renewable energy sources. The primary difference between operating a microgrid in islan ...

While aluminum casing materials provide some enhanced performance and thermal loading to explosive ordinance, their overall effectiveness is highly limited by incomplete combustion and long residence times. In order to reduce these problems, the casing material must be designed to facilitate rapid fragmentation through either specialized casing geometries or greatly refined initial particle sizes. ...